Airbnb fights back after opponents circulate fake news

Opponents and those competing with Airbnb are hotels, resorts, and community activists. Are these opponents now in the business of producing fake news, fake videos, and fake press releases? Obviously, these opponents want to stop Airbnb from doing business in cities around the United States.

eTN was one of the media targeted with authentic looking “fake news” yesterday.

eTN Chatroom: Discuss with readers from around the world:

eTN Publisher Juergen Steinmetz explained: “After eTN was unable to reach Airbnb, some of the news tips received were published by eTurboNews. After talking to Airbnb spokesperson Mattie Zazueta today, we believe our article was based on fake news and a fake video maliciously circulated by Airbnb opponents. On behalf of eTurboNews, we apologize for not having caught this in time.”

The video received claimed Airbnb’s own CEO, Brian Chesky, had admitted to the “negative impact” of vacation rentals in Los Angeles and was supporting limiting short-term rentals to primary residents only with caps to prevent taking homes off the market in cities with a housing constraint. The facts are actually very different.

Airbnb released the following statement yesterday after the Los Angeles City Council voted on an ordinance that legalizes home sharing and instructs the Planning & Land Use Management Committee to develop a separate ordinance that would bring the city’s vacation rental industry out of the shadows:

“Today the City Council voted to legalize homesharing in LA, providing thousands of Angelenos a way to earn critical income to make ends meet, and launched a pathway to regulate the city’s longstanding vacation rental market with sensible guardrails to protect housing. This is a big step in the right direction and we remain committed to working with the city to develop comprehensive, enforceable rules that are a model for cities around the world,” said John Choi, Airbnb Public Policy Manager.

Homesharing and vacation rentals play a critical role in allowing Angelenos to directly benefit from the more than 48 million visitors who travel to Los Angeles every year. The more than 1.6 million visitors that the Airbnb community welcomes help infuse LA with an additional $1.4 billion in local economic activity. Homesharing also directly benefits the City’s revenue – in just under two years since signing a tax collection agreement with the City, Airbnb has collected and remitted more than $100 million in taxes to help fund key city services like police and fire.

The city needs a comprehensive short-term rental policy that regulates all short-term rental activity, including its long standing vacation rental market. Airbnb will continue to work with the city to enact rules that preserve the economic benefits of short-term rentals for residents, while minimizing concerns regarding housing affordability.

A recent report about vacation rentals and Airbnb outlined the following:

According to the Census, in 2017 Los Angeles had some 1.5 million housing units – 13,587 of those listed as vacation rentals. This represents 0.9% of the City’s total housing stock– a number that has barely budged during the last few years, even as Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms have grown.

In contrast, there were fewer than 4,000 full-time Airbnb rentals in LA as of 2017 – making up just 0.26% of the city’s housing stock.

While short term rental platforms have not substantially contributed to the growth of vacation rentals, they have changed the way the marketplace operates. Many traditional vacation homes are now likely to be integrated with platforms, so any short-term rental policy should include clear rules and guidelines for how to operate vacation rentals responsibly.

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1979), beginning as a travel agent up through today as a publisher of eTurboNews (eTN), one of the world’s most influential and most-read travel and tourism publications. He is also Chairman of ICTP.
His experiences include working and collaborating with various national tourism offices and non-governmental organizations, as well as private and non-profit organizations, and in planning, implementing, and quality control of a range of travel and tourism-related activities and programs, including tourism policies and legislation. His major strengths include a vast knowledge of travel and tourism from the point of view of a successful private enterprise owner, superb networking skills, strong leadership, excellent communication skills, strong team player, attention to detail, dutiful respect for compliance in all regulated environments, and advisory skills in both political and non-political arenas with respect to tourism programs, policies, and legislation.
He has a thorough knowledge of current industry practices and trends and is a computer and Internet junkie.

Travel to and within the U.S. grew three percent year-over-year in July, according to the U.S. Travel Association's Travel Trends Index (TTI).
But the association's economists note that growth is slowing—putting the U.S. even further behind the pace of the sustained global travel boom.